Bernard Arnault regrets early exit from Netflix and Google

Speaking on the "Legend" podcast, Arnault revealed his family office invested $30 million in Netflix in July 1999, becoming its largest shareholder when the company still relied on mailing DVDs. By the summer of 2003, his team liquidated most of the stake at a market capitalization of $500 million. That figure represents a mere fraction of the company's current $300 billion valuation. Had he held the position, the shares would have peaked at over $110 billion last summer.

Arnault recounted a similar experience with Alphabet. During the dot-com crash, his firm received a significant batch of Google shares through a liquidated U.S. fund when the stock traded between $2 and $3. Unfamiliar with the search engine’s potential at the time, he sold the holding for a profit. Alphabet has since seen its market capitalization climb past $4 trillion. Despite these missed opportunities, Arnault maintains a $156 billion fortune, currently ranking as the wealthiest non-American on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.